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Sunday, October 6, 2013

Ask.fm. . . Digital Playground For Teen Trouble. . .

When
a state Attorney General sounds a warning, it’s typically in response to a
history of trouble that doesn’t look to take a turn in the right direction any
time soon. That’s what occasioned the recent big “BEWARE” and “WATCH OUT” that Maryland
Attorney General Douglas Gansler issued regarding the increasingly popular
social networking site, Ask.fm. Gansler’s appeal included a request to advertisers,
as he urged them to stop spending their marketing budget on Ask.fm banner ads.
Gansler wrote, “This website is putting children at risk. A growing number of
children under 13 use Ask.fm because it makes no meaningful effort to limit
underage access, and these kids are being exposed to malicious anonymous
postings, including racial slurs, sexual references, drug use, and personal
assaults.”

Are
Gansler and others in the growing army of Ask.fm critics over-reacting? Or
should parents, youth workers, educators, and others who care about kids echo
his warnings and encourage kids to stay away from Ask.fm? If the families of
the nine known young suicide victims who took their lives after being
anonymously harassed and bullied on Ask.fm had their way, the social networking
site would shrivel up and go away.

Ask.fm
is one of a number of social networking sites that have gone viral and gained a
fast-growing following among teenagers and young adults who are migrating off
of Facebook and other sites where their parents are increasingly showing up.
Launched in Latvia in June of 2010, Ask.fm is the brainchild of brothers Ilja
and Mark Terebin. After gaining popularity in Europe, Ask.fm quickly went
global, with several hundred thousand new users accessing the site each and
every day. While most users fall into the 13 to 25 year-old age bracket (half
of all Ask.fm users are under the age of 18), a large number of young users
skirt the 13-year-old age limit, lying about their age when they register.

The
site’s novel approach to social networking has created a niche for a type of
online communication that’s especially alluring to teenagers. The app is
centered around posting questions and answers, which are many times asked and
answered anonymously. Users can post questions that run the gamut from the
benign to the harmful, with many reflecting nothing more than adolescent curiosity
in a fun manner (“What’s your favorite ______?” Or “Do you like _______?” But
the site has been the target of criticism for becoming a place where the
subject and tone of questions and answers reflect the darker side of the human
condition and the demise of cultural standards. Questions like “Have you ever
thought about killing yourself?”, “Why are you so ugly?”, and “Why are you such
a slut?” spark accusatory and abusive responses including all kinds of
name-calling and bullying. Add to this ability to post hurtful words the ability
to post explicit and compromising videos and photos, and Ask.fm has become a dangerous
and hurt-filled adolescent playground. (For more detailed information on how
Ask.fm works, check out the Ask.fm website review at commonsensemedia.org).

Ask.fm’s
popularity has been fueled by several factors. First, it is largely parent-free.
Consequently, it serves as one of those “private uncontrolled spaces” where
teens choose to congregate in the absence of adults. There are no POS (Parents
Over Shoulder) watching, criticizing, or controlling your every move. Second,
Ask.fm is accountability-free. Even when posters choose to bypass anonymity and
reveal their true identity, there is usually nobody in authority there to set
boundaries or call you out with the threat of consequences. And third, the site
is anonymous. By hiding behind the veil of anonymity, the usually-timid kids are
more prone to say and do whatever they want. Anonymity lowers and erases
adolescent social inhibitions.

There
are several reasons why we should be encouraging or requiring our kids to stay
away from or leave the Ask.fm app.

First,
while the site has the potential to be a positive place where kids can gather
and have relatively innocent fun, it has quickly morphed into a gathering place
that is highly toxic in nature. Many teenagers enter Ask.fm knowing that it’s a
place to participate in anonymous nastiness and incivility. In fact, they go
there with the intention of anonymously pounding others with criticism,
harassment, and hate messages. Users receive virtual “bloody-noses” that can
leave them reeling as they don’t know what hit them. Stepping onto the Ask.fm “playground”
is risky business.

Second,
Ask.fm fuels the growing spirit of incivility that exists in today’s youth
culture. In fact, it has gotten so bad, that Ask.fm is taking some small steps
to make the “report” button more prominent so that users can report those who
engage in bullying and harassment. Still, critics accurately protest that these
measures will not and cannot be effective.

Third,
Ask.fm facilitates and amplifies adolescent drama that used to mostly be
confined to the hours and location of the school building. Now, the drama
extends into an online world void of adults that is open for business 24/7. As
a result, the protections that kept kids safe and once-fostered healthy
resilience are absent. Virtual mobs can gang up on and destroy vulnerable “targets”
who are real, feeling, flesh and blood peers. Ask.fm is like a virtual “Lord of
the Flies” where peers make and enforce the “rules.”

Fourth,
Ask.fm has become a place where users can be anonymously abusive and
threatening. They can post comments, photos, and videos that are explicitly
sexual and profane.

Finally,
Ask.fm provides an easy, almost boundary-less (very few controls and
privacy-settings) path to destroying young lives. As mentioned before, no fewer
than nine adolescent suicides have been linked to the barrage of bullying that
was perpetrated on the social networking site. No doubt, these are complex
stories with many variables at work. But Ask.fm has played a role.

Sadly,
Ask.fm reflects the fact that our kids are living in a world that is void of a
moral compass. In addition, it maps out for impressionable young Ask.fm users a
manner of living and relating that is highly destructive. What happens on
Ask.fm becomes normalized behavior and an example of not only the way the world
is, but the way the world should be.

While
Ask.fm is not inherently evil or destructive in its structure, it has morphed
in a direction that has made it especially conducive to misuse. Consequently,
Ask.fm is a place where kids of any age
don’t belong. Because Ask.fm has turned into a social network marked by
brash incivility, it’s a place to avoid.

Steer the kids
you know and love away from Ask.fm. Instead, teach them how to relate in civil, grace-filled, God-honoring ways in real-life face-to-face relationships. And when they're online, teach them to do the same.

5 comments:

Thanks for talking about the dangers of Ask.fm Walt. I learned about the site from teens this past summer and wrote a post for my readers to warn them of the site and potential dangers for their teens. We need to make sure parents, youth workers educators etc. are aware of this and other potential dangerous sites that teens are engaging with. Here is the post I worte back in August about Ask.fm: http://daverozman.com/2013/08/20/popular-teen-app-spotlight-ask-fm-2/

I stumbled on the fact that my two teens were minimally active in Ask.fm. I was very glad to see that Ask.fm provides an RSS feed for each user. What that means is that I can subscribe to the feed for my teens' accounts, then monitor activity through my normal RSS reader (what I use for my news feeds). I quickly see what kinds of questions have been posted and how my teens respond. I have not yet chosen to discuss this social networking site with my teens...kind of watching and waiting for now.

I didn't wait until I saw something that might be inappropriate for my kids ask accounts. I made them all disable them immediately. NOTHING good will come of this. If it's anonymous, nothing stops kids from saying cowardly things that can be long-term devastating.

By monitoring and not jumping in immediately, I was able to see how my 15-yr old used humor, wit and positive comments to deflect questions that could have led to trouble. I gained an appreciation for her ability to not get pulled into the muck. Now, will I talk with her about this site? Yes. But after I read through her responses, I'm not freaking out.

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Who I am. . .

Walt Mueller. . . a guy who was made, messed up, and mercifully made over by His grace. . . struggling to live life to His glory in the now but not yet Kingdom of God. . . longing to enter into that glorious time when what originally was will be fully restored.

How I spend my days. . .

after several years doing youth ministry, I've spent the last 24 years studying, writing, and speaking about youth culture with a great group of folks at the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding. I've been married to my wife Lisa for over 30 years and we've been blessed with four children. . . and twin grandchildren.